I guess I'll comment.

Because I ruin everything, it was my channel (#tf2.mix.nahl) that was the first to leave GameSurge and move to GeeksIRC - http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/13907-changes-in-tf2-mix-nahl. In short, we moved because I got tired of patching the issues we had with GameSurge, and we needed a solution.

We were beset by trolls. There were periods where we'd get a single person trying to enter the channel through 20-30 proxies within an hour. Initially, we had to manually ban these people on each of their proxies. Eventually, I had blindsight write a bot to do it, which was later implemented in #tf2.pug.nahl (this is the bot smakers mentioned). Anyone who joined as part of a proxy network was automatically temp banned. This greatly reduced the porn spam and racial slurs our channel suffered.

The thing was, GameSurge's temp ban lists are kind of derpy. Depending on how someone is banned on GameSurge, they can go on one of three (? I ran my channel for a year and was still kind of mystified about the various banlists, despite talking to GameSurge opers multiple times) banlists. The banlist our bot was temp banning to was full. The banlist most of our admins were banning to was also full. You might ask "why were you banning so many people?", to which my reasonable answer would be "because I'm hitler" that we weren't. Most of the new bans - especially new permanent bans - were alternate IPs for existing banned players (due to them moving, going to and from school, etc).

When considering switching networks I did actually look at QuakeNet - after all, "they have euros". The fact was, I was extremely dissatisfied with the situation QuakeNet offered. Our problem was maintaining our banlists, but QuakeNet had a really really messy ban system - potentially, banning someone by IP would result in banning their entire dorm, or entire campus. This wasn't an acceptable solution.

When blindsight offered me GeeksIRC as a solution, I jumped at it - they offered me the services I wanted, were willing to customize them to running a TF2 channel, and had considerable ban flexibility. I was incredibly willing to consider them as an option without the coercion cinq implies. Any stalling on the move on my part came from wanting to minimize how many different changes happened in my channel, so I waited for our new bot (which wouldn't work on QuakeNet without a massive rewrite, at which point it would run considerably slower than it does now) before moving.

I knew #tf2mix was thinking about moving, but didn't know how committed they were to QuakeNet. I new #tf2.pug.nahl was also going to move, but was similarly waiting to switch bots - actually to a modified version of the bot #tf2.mix.nahl currently uses (after we get some playtesting in), which again, wouldn't work on QuakeNet.

I have no desire to divide the community. However, I wonder if dividing the North American 6s and Highlander communities isn't worse than dividing the European and North American 6s communities. That #tf2mix and #tf2scrim are now moving independently of #tf2.pug.na, #tf2.mix.nahl and #tf2.pug.nahl worries me.

For what it's worth, the euros are welcome to come to GeeksIRC - the network opers, in my experience, are remarkably responsive, the network seems to be easy for any existing bots to adapt to, and channel registration is free and easy. GeeksIRC even has a european node, no people don't have to worry about latency to the network.

Exactly. That rule required active admin attention to be obeyed, and when enforced, usually resulted in a lot of admin hate.

I'm aware random is unpopular at the moment, but it's a fix for a lot of our problems.

crossfire, I'd love to have a third channel, but the community's really not large enough. As it is, there are several nights where it's a coin flip between mix.nahl and pug.nahl for which is active. Random mode gives a little more delineation of purpose between the two channels.

So there's been some big changes in the IRC pug scene recently, some of which are still ongoing.

Notably, these include changes with NA Highlander Mix.

The first big change is that we moved networks, to GeeksIRC. Full details of how to connect to the new network are available here, but if you want to check us out using webchat, you can do so (with your choice of GUIs) here.

Moving on, mix was always meant to be an intermediate highlander pug channel, focusing on the as-yet-unknown highlander players, rather than catering to the players who are already known and respected (seeing as they mostly play in #tf2.pug.nahl). However, what happened is that some people played a lot and became known and started getting picked all the time, while some people were new and couldn't play. This was unfortunate, and we tried to fix it by making and enforcing a variety of rules, but it seemed irreparable.

So we wrote a new bot. Part of the idea of this bot is it alternates between captain games and random games (similar to what #tf2mix does) - so if you don't get picked during a captain game, you're guaranteed to play during a random game (unless you get AFK'd). That is, even if no one knows you, you're guaranteed to play the class you add up as.

If this mode does well and is well accepted, we'll be able to do away with a variety of rules:

1. Playing your main in mix if you're Gold+.
2. Potentially, no spycaptaining (the cost of spycaptaining will be all but negated, as other spies will be able to play in random games, and the incentive will also be negated, as the would-be spycaptain will be able to play in random games).
3. Picking people with 0 games.

So come check it out!

I, too, admin a fuckton of things that are some necessary and some not. I've spent many hours over the course of many nights fantasizing about shutting them all down. There have been several weeks where I never launched the game (why play what isn't fun?) but still spent more than an hour a day helping people with TF2-related things.

For me, the thing that kept (and still keeps) me from quitting was changing the way I played. I quit every team I was on and took some time off, then came back as a different class playing a different format on a different account.

The admin stuff I still do I mostly do without devoting too much emotional energy to - it turns out that a lot of the stress I was attributing to being an admin came from just being generally miserable with the game (and, as additional spillover, generally miserable with my life). Taking a break helped.

What also helped was remembering that the game is silly and should be played silly-ly. I used to play MvM a lot to do silly shit, but then I started taking it too seriously and had to stop. Recently, my outlet has been pyro dodgeball and randomizer.

IDK what to tell you. Good luck.

No. I'll post something when signups close for roster checking and practice scheduling purposes, but I want teams to confirm their participation, etc first.

You can schedule your matches to different times/different days, but your opponents and the admins have to agree. I'd be agreeable, but it really is up to your opponents...

Just sign up again. I'll remove the original entry if there's a more complete second entry.

Yes. Whip is too much fun for me to keep it banned in conscience.

No. Check again.

... Mantreads shouldn't be banned :X

EDIT: I might note that I'm correcting the whitelist reading, not actually commenting on what I feel should or shouldn't be true here.

This is a (slightly outdated) copy of the whitelist: http://ge.tt/11OO6Ie/v/0?c

The main change is that vitasaw is now BANNED.

I'll message you about this later. Our bot is also written in ruby, but I don't do maintenance of it.

Someone linked this to me because I run an IRC PuG and they thought I might want to know. Or something.

By page 4 I'm now super confused about whether this is something my little intermediate highlander pug really needs to worry about.

In summary:
Some trolls who have ESEA beef are messing with people using IPs they got off of pug.na, using a program they purchased online?

You're giving somewhat legit, but somewhat fearmongering advice about how to protect your IP in IRC as a result, as well as posting the profiles of the people who did it.

Moving on:
As an admin of a different community, I don't worry so much about the identities of these specific perpetrators - I'm sure they DON'T care about intermediate HL, and probably won't troll me or any of the people I want to protect. However, I would like to know how to protect my players from this sort of thing, as there may be "copycats" who decide to target other players.

This said, "security by obscurity" doesn't work, as someone mentioned earlier. This is part of fundamental security theory. Masking the IPs of people who join my channel isn't necessarily the right way to protect my players. Also, their IP is fully visible in any server logs, which I can't control. If you connect to a server after logging starts for that round (after the cfg is execed), your IP will show up in the matchlogs, downloadable from logs.tf - IRC is CLEARLY not the only problem. It is incredibly difficult to protect your IP from people and still play PuGs, and perhaps not a worthwhile goal at all.

FIRST TIME EVER NOT GETTING SUPER LAG AT THE LOGIN SCREEN.

I'm blaming my school's internet, now :X

For all who are curious-

STV demos (I believe) - http://ge.tt/9BXoeba?c
logs (badwater) - http://logs.tf/15569
logs (gullywash) - http://logs.tf/15578